ABSTRACT
The law made it a crime for anyone — even a married couple — to practice any form of birth control. A doctor or pharmacist who prescribed, sold or counseled a couple in the use of contraceptive devices was an accessory to this crime, punishable by up to a year in prison. The sudden judicial discovery of such a previously invisible right, 178 years into the mission, is the kind of thing that threatens the myth of the document, unless some credible connection to the parchment can be suggested. “The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution,” White wrote. The system works best when the court can bring the Constitution into line with widely shared mores and ethics of contemporary Americans.
